partner, Oliver Morton, the Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of
Technology–trained Saltonstall was a regional master of Midcentury
Modern. He designed a prototype solar house in Natick, Massachusetts, in 1946 and was a founder of Boston’s Institute of Contemporary
Art, then called the Boston Museum of Modern Art. He is best known
for his Bauhaus-inspired vacation houses on the Outer Cape, including a 10-cottage artists colony in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Hammer
had renovated another Saltonstall house in that town, but the Chestnut Hill example was previously unknown to him.

The swimming pool, the envelope of the building, and severalexposed steel columns were unalterable givens, but Hammer and hispartner, Don DiRocco, were able to reconfigure the plan by changingwhat was just a gallery and entertaining space into a home with twobedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a free-flowing entrance-living-dining area. “Once we moved the utilities,” DiRocco says, “thebuilding made a lot of sense.” This allowed the grouping of privateareas along the street side of the house, which is partially burrowedinto a hillside, and opened the rest of the house to the pool.

The original exhibition walls had no windows, so Hammer added
clerestories to the two bedrooms. The master bedroom was given a
12-foot-long, 6-foot-deep exterior light well, with a ladder up to ground
level for emergency egress, that brings in abundant light through a wall
of glass. Outside, the space became a meditative Zen garden. Several
skylights bring additional natural light into the interior.

While the nonpublic rooms are grouped on the street side, the
L-shaped living area is an open space focused on the outdoors. Slid-

;;;;;; ;;;; ;; the island in the
kitchen. Above her in the
refurbished original fir ceiling
is one of several skylights.

Except for some cooking tools
and a few favorite dishes,
everything is hidden behind
storage doors ;;;;;; ;;;;;;.